Page:A Compendium of the Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.djvu/183

Rh " (vii. 39). But after the Lord even as to the Human was made Jehovah, that is Divine Good,—which was after the resurrection,—He was then no longer Divine Truth, but this proceeded from His Divine Good. That the Holy Spirit is the Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord's Divine Human, and not any spirit or any spirits from eternity, is very manifest from the Lord's words in the passage cited, that "the Holy Spirit was not yet." And then it is manifest that a spirit himself cannot proceed, but the holy [effluence] of a spirit, that is, the holy [effluence] which proceeds from the Lord, and which a spirit utters. From these considerations now it follows that the whole Trinity is perfect in the Lord, namely, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and thus that there is one God,—and not three, who, distinct as to person, are said to constitute one Divine. The reason why they were called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the Word was that men might acknowledge the Lord, and also the Divine in Him. For man was in so thick darkness,—as he also is at this day,—that otherwise he would not have acknowledged any Divine in the Lord's Human; for this to him would have been above all faith, because entirely incomprehensible. And moreover it is a truth that there is a Trinity; but in one, namely, in the Lord. And it is acknowledged too in the Christian churches that the Trinity dwells perfectly in Him. The Lord also taught plainly that Himself was one with the Father (John xiv. 9-12); and that the holy [truth] which the Holy Spirit speaks is not His, but the Lord's, in John: "The Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, . ., shall not speak from Himself, hut whatsoever He shall hear He shall speak: . . . He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and shall proclaim it unto you" (xvi. 13, 14). That the Comforter is the Holy Spirit is declared in John xiv. 26. (A. C, n. 6993.)

The Sacred Scripture teaches, and reason enlightened therein and therefrom by the Lord sees, that God is one; but that God was triune before the world was created the Sacred Scripture does not teach, and reason enlightened therefrom does not see. What is said in David, "This day have I begotten Thee," is not from eternity, but in the fulness of time; for the future in God is present, thus to-day. So likewise this passage in Isaiah: "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, whose name is God, Hero, the Father of eternity."

What rational mind, when it hears that before the creation of the world there were three Divine persons, called the Father,